This Shared Dream (7 page)

Jill sprawled on a couch, closed her eyes, and tried to remember whether or not she had told the therapist about the Infinite Game Board, but she couldn’t. If she had, she hoped that Nancy had not made a note of it.

She didn’t think that Brian and Megan remembered the Game Board at all. It had been swept from them like the childhood toy they’d all thought it was, at first, found in the huge, old attic on a rainy day, with a strange surface that changed constantly. They had found a few games that worked.

Found?
She snorted aloud, but of course, no one in the dayroom noticed. Most likely, the game had tailored itself to their level. It was Q, in another, earlier incarnation: potent, seductive, and revelatory. She knew that now. They had hidden it from their parents, naturally, since it was so much fun, but after a while it gave them visions of future histories—holocausts, flames, wars—that made them, literally, ill. Eventually, Jill had sequestered it for herself, and told Brian and Megan that it was lost. Her ideas for her ten-minutes-of-fame comic book,
Gypsy Myra,
which featured a tall, fierce woman with long, black, curly hair, who wore long gypsy skirts, played gypsy violin, and told the future, sprang from the board. She hadn’t the faintest idea how it worked. And finally, the board had shown her the scenario she had first made into an underground comic book in 1968, after King and Robert Kennedy were murdered. The board, and Gypsy Myra, showed her that her brother might die in Vietnam. It showed her how—where—to change that history, how to hitchhike into time. The board had led her to Dallas, five years in the past of that time line. Somehow her father had followed her, rescued her, and they emerged …

Here. Back in 1968, but a 1968 in which Jack Kennedy had not died, nor his brother Robert, nor Martin Luther King Jr.

A 1968 in which Brian and Megan accepted that their mother had disappeared in 1963, rather than living with them in Halcyon House, working on her doctorate in education, and opening a Montessori school in a large back room of the house.

Her memories of that time, were, not surprisingly, vague, shifting, like dreams that, when you wake up and try to recall the specifics, evaporate.

She wanted, desperately, to remember what had happened. She wanted, now, to know how it had happened. What about the Game Board had precipitated a shift in history? That was what her political science studies were all about, at heart. She had hoped they would fill that gap, give her and Brian and Megan, Bette and Sam, without the hard work of
remembering
 …

She wiped away tears and stared at the ceiling, surprised, realizing that before now she had not wanted to remember. It had been too enormous to comprehend. She had wanted to push all that aside, to get on with what people did as they grew up.

So she went to college, got married, started a business, had a baby, pursued her ferocious interest in international politics.

And all that got her was exhausted and crazy. Just goes to show you.

But she was no longer exhausted. Not today. She sat up.

Was she crazy? By all normal measures, yes. Except that she knew that she wasn’t.

So she had to try to figure out, after all these years, what had happened, and why. What was memory, anyway? What was time; what was that elusive subject, history, which she’d studied so long and hard? Megan was working on a memory drug. Maybe there was a reason. Maybe Megan remembered more about the past than she would admit to. Or not as much as she would like to.

And Brian—well, he’d worked hard at blotting everything out. Kind of like her, she supposed, only she used work, while he used alcohol.

The trees outside were fat and green. The streets, she knew, were hot and packed with traffic; the sky was full of smog; evenings released refreshing thunderstorms.

It was spring in Washington, which she always found glorious. The city would heal her, if she would just get out into it.

It was time to leave this place.

*   *   *

Elmore allowed her discharge mainly, Jill thought, because their insurance had run out and he was tired of paying the au pair he’d hired to take care of Stevie. She hadn’t seen Stevie in a month. Children were not allowed at the hospital.

Elmore went on a tirade as they drove through Washington, but his words were a bit like the trees and houses, things that passed with whooshing sounds and were gone. It was actually kind of funny. Phrases like “Sick of this,” “You’re acting like a child,” “I told you [fill in the blank]” had no meaning anymore. She interrupted his running narrative of her faults.

“You used to be different.”

“What?” He actually turned and looked at her. “She speaks. Okay. I’m trying to listen. But don’t you realize that’s what you’ve been saying about everything this past month? Everything used to be different.” He sighed. “I shouldn’t have let them talk me into committing you, but you were … combative. Hysterical.”

“I was?”

He shook his head as the light turned green, and moved the car forward another block. “See? You don’t remember. They told me that it was likely that you would experience more … cognitive breaks … As time went on.”

“Cognitive breaks,” she said thoughtfully.

“Yes. You may be schizophrenic.”

“Hence, lithium?”

“You have to understand, I didn’t know what to do. I still don’t know what to do.”

“It’s not right.”

“I know, but—”

“I mean, it’s not right that if I argue with you, you can label it as being combative and say that it’s bad. It’s inconvenient, I know. It takes up your valuable time.” She stirred, restless, feeling as if she would like to jump out of the car.

And run home.

Maybe that was the best thing to do. Just because her last attempt had failed didn’t mean she shouldn’t try again, and succeed. Before that, she hadn’t even known what she wanted.

She said, “What about Stevie?”

“What do you mean?”

“You talked about a divorce at the hospital. In fact, it sounded to me as if you’d started proceedings. Did you send me any papers? I don’t remember. Do I need a lawyer?”

“Jill, we can talk about this later.”

“Where’s Stevie?”

“At preschool.”

“I want to see him.”

“He’ll be home around three.”

“I want to see him now. Take me there.”

“I don’t want you to cause a scene.”

“I just want to see my son.” She was surprised to hear that her voice was firm and strong. Inside, she was trembling, on the verge of tears. She watched Elmore as he pressed his lips together. In a second he would say “No,” as if she were Stevie’s age.

“Elmore. Listen to me. I’m sorry this happened. I understand how unhappy you are with me.”

“It’s not—”

“No, wait. Let me finish. I think you’re right about a divorce. I will keep Stevie. I will—”

“No.”

She continued to talk, slowly, firmly. “You can see him whenever you like. Stevie and I will live at Halcyon House.”

“With what money?”

She laughed. “Well, they actually do want me at the World Bank, although I know that amazes you. And I’ll have the money from selling our bookstore and town house.”

“I don’t want to sell them.”

“I thought you did. But fine. We’ll get everything appraised and you can pay me my half.”

“I can’t afford that.”

“You can make payments. Oh, but we don’t have to talk about it now. I know you’re a little disturbed. There’s Stevie’s school.” She thought a moment. “Maybe you’re right. Let’s not bother the class. Let’s go home. I’ll see him soon.” She turned her face to the open window, hoping that the wind would dry the sweat of her effort from her face before Elmore noticed it.

Jill

HOME AGAIN

May 4

A
COUPLE OF WEEKS
after Jill’s release from St. Elizabeth’s and many unpleasant legal machinations, Jill stood on the city sidewalk facing her childhood home.

It was a Saturday morning. The clear, clean creek, to her left, roared from the culvert swift and full. Brilliant yellow forsythia ranged through the landscape, bending beneath the breeze, dotting its way down the bank through Sam’s old rock garden, past Bette’s place of solace, a small roofed pavilion. The air was clean and cool, probably the last breath of coolness before summer hit—which, according to the weather report, would be around noon, when the temperature would soar and humidity move in.

Whens clutched her right hand. Manfred, who was mostly Saint Bernard, sat next to them. Elmore was only too happy to get rid of Manfred, since she shed on his ten-thousand-dollar custom-made couch, and could clear his priceless porcelain from the coffee table with an affable wag of her powerful tail.

Whens asked, “Mommy, is this the house?”

“Yes. It’s the house Uncle Brian and Aunt Megan and I grew up in. Grandma and Grandpa’s house.” It seemed funny to say this to Stevie. To
Whens
; she’d finally fully succumbed to calling him Whens. He had never met her parents; they had disappeared years before he was born.

“But Gram and Gramps live in Annandale.”

“They’re your daddy’s mother and father. This is where my parents lived—Grandma and Grandpa Dance.”

Steady on, she thought, staring at the house with eyes as wide as Whens’, seeing it for what it truly was: an old, neglected wreck of a gargantuan, yet stately Victorian mansion, complete with a ballroom on the second floor. Sam’s gardens engulfed the house like a sea, waves of varyingly high foliage topped with hollyhocks yellow and violet, lower eddies of mostly spent tulips frothing white and magenta; spears of pink lilies and a whole patch of orange, self-seeding bachelor buttons that had helped themselves to ever-widening territories. Vines ran riot over the porch. A climbing yellow rose blocked the windows of the north front room, obviously delighted with its house-sized trellis. Oak limbs the size of elephant legs overhung the roof. They would require surgery, preferably before the next strong breeze. The house needed a serious infusion of cash.

Halcyon House was principally green, although that was debatable, what with the paint peeling so badly. The stained-glass trim above the windows on Jill’s old tower room shone yellow, red, and blue. The window was open, just a bit; rain would have gotten onto the hardwood floor.

That was the least of her problems.

Whens tugged on her hand. “Let’s go in.”

She smiled. “Okay.”

The sidewalk leading up to the porch was frost-heaved. She remembered roller-skating here, dashing streetward but making sure not to let her skates catch on the bump. It had been five years since she had been inside—save for the episode that had landed her in St. E’s, which she did not remember—and apprehension seized her: What would be different? What would be the same?

And could she bear it?

She glanced down at Whens. She had to bear it.

“There’s a hole.”

She lifted him over the rotten wooden step. She held him on her hip as she slipped the house key from the pocket of her jeans and unlocked the door. She pushed it open, and the musty smell of pent-up years rushed out.

“It’s dark.”

Jill said, “Let’s open the blinds.”

Megan had had the front window repaired. Though Jill didn’t remember bursting through it, she had a scar on her chest from one of the shards. She was lucky not to have cut her throat.

“I’ll do it, Mommy.” Whens pulled on the cord with all his might, hand-over-hand like a seaman raising sail.

The wooden slats clacked. Sunlight brightened the multicolored spines of several thousand books on their built-in shelves. Jill unlocked the tall, wavy windows on each side of the repaired plate glass and raised them. Fresh air washed through the room.

Whens looked around. “It’s pretty. Like a storybook.”

“Yes,” she said, transported. In Whens’ voice she heard Megan’s, when she was five, skinny and antic, always laughing or dancing. Whens, despite his similar voice, was serious, almost grave, with a sense of humor too grown-up by far, and she wished for a moment that he might imbibe some of Megan’s cheerful spirit here. But even Megan was serious, now.

Megan must have dusted the eclectic mix of furniture, and washed the gilded-frame mirror over the fireplace, for everything was splendidly clean. On both sides of the fireplace, shelves overflowed with an irregular tapestry of books. Old friends, some her mother’s: international policy, the brain, DNA, and ancient Chinese poetry.

Her father’s books were more concrete. World War II. Physics. Engineering. Watson and Crick and obscure journals. But after … after …

She sighed. Say it. After Mom Left.

After Bette vanished, Sam read more novels, almost as if questing after information about the physical world was completely useless. He devoured fiction, she recalled, lying on the couch and smoking, day and night, when he wasn’t working.

“Mommy.”

“What?”

“I’m thirsty.”

Jill returned to the present. “Ha! Look at this.” She rushed toward the kitchen, pulling Whens behind her. Manfred padded along, turning her head from one side to the other, inhaling and sorting the huge house. “No problem! We’ve got everything here. Electricity! Garbage pickup! I’ve started the
Washington Post
! And—ta-daa”—she turned on the tap triumphantly—“water!”

Whens, unmoved, gazed at his mother and then at the sink, pondering. “We usually have water, don’t we?”

Jill smiled. “I know you take all of that for granted, sweetie, but it doesn’t happen by magic.”

A large, round oak table, painted white, anchored the kitchen. Glass-fronted cabinets, framed by dark walnut, reached to the ceiling, showing off their early-sixties contents. Green, yellow, and red Fiestaware, a Tupperware Popsicle-maker, Bette’s well-used electric coffee percolator. The backsplash was tiled with pale green tiles.

Whens frowned. “I don’t want water. I want a Slinger.”

“No Slingers. Too much sugar.”

She tried to ignore the doubleness she had come here to confront, the two lives, stretching out behind her, seemingly parallel and yet not, with that paradoxical break, its Möbius-like twist that baffled her ideas of continuity, linearity, cause and effect. Had she not gone to Dallas, what might be different here, now?